TWO:When Louis XIV. died, people were very tired of this altered state of things. For some time they had been extremely dull and were eager for change and amusement.Among the Palais Royal set, it was the fashion to find fault with everything done by the royalists, to go as seldom as possible to Versailles and to pretend to find it a great bore when it was necessary to do so.
TWO:It consisted, at the death of Louis XV., of the King, aged nineteen; the Queen, eighteen; the Comte de Provence, eighteen; the Comtesse de Provence, twenty; the Comte dArtois, seventeen; and the Comtesse dArtois, eighteen. Of Mesdames Adla?de, Victoire, Sophie, and Louise, the last of whom was a Carmelite nun, and whose ages were from thirty-eight to forty-three.The real names of Mlle. de Maintenon were Anne Paule Dominique, which, sonorous as they sound, were those of a poor old man and woman of the labouring class whom the Duchess had chosen to be her daughters godfather and godmother.
